Plusnet Usergroup

All Users - The Open Forum => Announcements => Topic started by: wildmind on January 08, 2007, 09:01:40 pm

Title: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: wildmind on January 08, 2007, 09:01:40 pm

We've just posted an announcement which includes a bit of a recruitment push.

http://usergroup.plus.net/news_070108_colin.php

If you want to get more involved in PUG please read the article and follow the suggestions :mrgreen:

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: Tam on January 08, 2007, 09:18:08 pm

I vote for Simon (pr100) - Come on - that would be fun .. and a good writer too :-P

I'll even give him one of my accounts to "manage" if necessary :D :D

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: strategici on January 17, 2007, 11:17:07 pm

I've tried to make contact through PM, but it doesn't seem to send the message (just returns me to my message with no error message when I preview or send). And the contact form is disabled. Could someone perhaps send me an email address or let me know what I'm doing wrong?

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: biondani on January 17, 2007, 11:21:55 pm

Try this link (http://usergroup.plus.net/forum/index.php?action=pm;sa=send;u=5) and see if that works any better.

Ian

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: strategici on January 18, 2007, 03:38:07 pm

Still no joy - can't PM you either! Maybe I should try setting up a new account?

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: James on January 18, 2007, 05:22:27 pm

I've just sent you a PM so you can see if replying works.

If it does, perhaps one of the UG could send you one to reply to, which they could then pass on to Mike?

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: billbow on January 21, 2007, 11:09:50 am

We've just posted an announcement which includes a bit of a recruitment push.

http://usergroup.plus.net/news_070108_colin.php

If you want to get more involved in PUG please read the article and follow the suggestions :mrgreen:

How many of PUG employed by PN does that make now?

No wonder they are so scared to criticise anything PN does

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: wildmind on February 03, 2007, 08:51:33 pm

3 in recent times - out of a total PUG membership of over 35 people in our history.

Trust me - we aint here to get jobs.... but if we do then do you a) blame us for accepting and b) blame PN for wanting people who know the industry and the business?

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: NB on February 03, 2007, 09:28:14 pm

If PUG want to recruit new members to replace those who have left wouldn't it be more democratic and representative of the userbase to have a public election process rather than a secretive selection process. The current method give ammunition to the critics of PUG as we neither know who has applied, or by what method they were selected/rejected.

By my reckoning the PUG are predominently highly IT literate and, with few exceptions, male. Whilst I accept the need for skilled people, acceptance into PUG should be about more than what skills you can bring to PUG. Rather it should be about what type of wider user that person would be representative of, whether they have skills or not.

As I understood it the primary purpose of PUG was to represent the userbase in discussions with Plusnet. Whether you can write content for the PUG portal, write code for the PUG site, moderate the PUG forums, or do maintenance/housekeeping tasks on them is irrelevant - the PUG site is not the purpose of, or reason for acceptance to, PUG (or at least it shouldn't be).

Here is a challenge to the PUG - become more open and accountable to the wider userbase.

If you accept this challenge then induct a new member into the usergroup by means of a public election here on the forum to be truly a users representative. AFAIK the usergroup was initially selected by Ian W when set up, and PUG has picked those who have joined subsequently, and has NEVER had anyone become a member who was chosen by the userbase to represent them.

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: Ultra on February 04, 2007, 04:37:56 pm

I think northbritish has some good points, which probably need to be discussed by PUG before response. For PUG, it would seem appropriate for an open invitation for interested parties to be made via a PN communication sent out to all customers (as part of a newsletter, perhaps), with explanation that PUG is using the communication facility to ensure it reaches those who are not regular visitors to the PUG site (which should get a further plug as it still seems to be secondary to the PN discussion section, whilst being a good umbrella for all parts of PN).

Part of the background to PUG has been the involvement of non-technical users, including those who might not use this web discussion section... It seems a regular thing to limit applications to those who are 'regulars' (good idea in some ways, but limiting in others). Breaking that mould would be good, IMO. It might be that some vote could be done around the end of March (admittedly a busy time, with the 'product refresh' likely to be under discussion between PUG/PN, too) but it would be timely to have some new PUG members to announce before / near the refresh, and they could 'see with new eyes' and give candid views on the proposed refresh, perhaps adding valuable insight as brand new PUG members.

I note that there was no mention in the 'announcements (http://portal.plus.net/central/forums/viewforum.php?f=26)' on the PN discussion area about the PUG vacancies, whereas there's a piece about the vacancy for a moderator over there, along with a clear procedure for nominating, voting on, and acceptance of, a new moderator. As northbritsh has pointed out, secretive selection gives ammunition to critics.

While not all aspects {of the PN forum moderator selection} are ideal - taking the first suggestion for why someone should be nominated as the piece to put out in public, for example - the overall method seems fair enough, and transparent - though there's no reporting of how many nominations were made but rejected (nor why).

(edit: correct a typo)

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: wildmind on February 04, 2007, 06:04:54 pm

Some valid points indeed - and we have in the past tried asking people to volunteer in public, and that didn't work too well and some found it a bit embarrassing.

The reason we are looking for specific roles this time out is that we have plenty of members with varying degrees of experience and understanding, across all the product sets and vISPS. What we are really short of is people to communicate what we are doing and develop new tools and keep the site up to date (especially as Colin has now joined PN and he was *the* developer. Losing Liam meant that I am the only "journo" and I no longer have the time I once had due to getting a new job)

That is the reason we need specific roles filling - simply to keep PUG running. The plan always has been to ask for other members once we have those roles filled and can keep on top of the site, news and development of PUGIT etc.

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: Ultra on February 04, 2007, 08:04:53 pm

In which case, with specific roles in mind, it could still be put out via a PN communication, to embrace a wider audience, and perhaps find someone who has yet to visit these pages!

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: James on February 05, 2007, 11:05:47 am

I can understand why people are put off applying - I did, and didn't even receive a thanks, but no thanks reply!

I realise that the UG probably won't want me, as I am far from keen on the way that things appear to be done ATM, but would have thought some response would be ellicited.

*sighs*

Hopefully whomever does get on board the UG train will find a way to make it a bigger part of the customer experience.

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: wildmind on February 05, 2007, 11:08:21 am

James,

That was my bad then - I though had PMd you to say thanks for the PM.

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: dhookham on February 05, 2007, 02:04:58 pm

Something which doesn't always come across is that PUG is (and has always been) something we all do in our "spare" time. With the loss of Colin and Liam to the dark side, departures of several others such as Penny, and various pressures on others, those of us remaining were stretched pretty thin.

As Mike says, there's always been a wide range of knowledge and abilities since the days of Ian's initial group, but as well as this there needs to be people with the technical skills to handle the website, write communications, etc to ensure that information about activity taking place and any outputs is able to be made available in a timely manner. Things change fast in the ISP world and we know we've not always managed to reflect that with the speed of our communications.

However, I think the current situation is not a negative place to be - it puts us in a great position to embrace new people with fresh ideas and opinions.

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: NB on February 05, 2007, 05:54:53 pm

Well I have used Joomla, SMF, Etomite, & phpBB to varying degrees and would be capable of performing all sorts of housekeeping tasks on the portal/forums (though not coding, I know my limitations :wink:).

I have no intention though of PM'ing wildmind to secretly try and join a self selecting, unaccountable, clique - however well intentioned they are. Have open and above board elections for full usergroup membership and I'll consider standing for that though, and if I can assist then with the portal/forum I would. But as I said earlier, IMO membership should be primaraly about representing the userbase to Plusnet not about how good you are at building websites/forums.

Being short of skills in certain areas is no excuse for not holding open elections. All you need to do is ask people to bear in mind those shortages when voting.

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: dhookham on February 05, 2007, 07:44:15 pm

membership should be primaraly about representing the userbase to Plusnet not about how good you are at building websites/forums.

Absolutely true, but it's equally true that no matter how good the usergroup is at representing the userbase if there's no-one able to turn the outputs of that representation into a format that can subsequently be communicated out to the users. We need to find the balance between people with the skills to maintain/develop the systems stuff, those whose focus is on communicating and the rest of us. The important thing about PUG is that everyone is able to bring something to the table, whether it be the aforementioned skills, or representing specific interests of the userbase.

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: James on February 07, 2007, 04:19:48 pm

Any ideas when the posts will be filled?

I'm thinking of unstickying the announcements in the vISP boards - any objections?

~I'd actually prefer an update as to whats happening to stick into the threads then unsticky them somewhere down the line if possible.

Feel free to stick a comment in here, and I'll copy it across to the various announcements, or just drop into the portals/boards and add an update yourself.

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: James on February 13, 2007, 09:22:25 am

No update then? So much for serving the interests of Plusnet customers - we can't even get to find out whats going on.

Once again, some sort of acknowledgement might not have been a nad thing, even if there is no further information to release at this stage.

GRRRRR

Title: Re: PUG waves farewell to Colin and opens up for new members.
Post by: NB on February 13, 2007, 01:06:58 pm